I love to write. I enjoy crafting novels, short stories, and this little blog. All of those things keep my attention and enthusiasm, which, as I've discovered over the last six months, is necessary in order to keep it going.
I say this because this wasn't my only blog for a while. I'm a parent, and all of us parents have bizarre stories about the things our children have done. One night, my daughter dropped a heart shaped locket in the toilet and was crying for me to retrieve it. As soon as I looked in the bowl, of course, it turns out she had just ripped off a big old shit. It took some skill and a lot of bleach to both get it back and return it to a state where we'd let her wear it again.
While relaying this story to a friend of mine, we thought it'd be neat to put this, along with a whole bunch of other stories about our kids, online for the world to laugh at with us. It was part revelatory and part therapy. I found six other parents I know, and we agreed to each do a post a week, with each of us assigned to a different day. Each post didn't have to be long, maybe just a quote, but something to get the ball rolling. After all, our stories were so funny that the web traffic would roll right in...right?
Yeah - it lasted about five weeks.
The necessary enthusiasm just wasn't there. Life intruded, as it has a habit to do, and we all missed deadlines. Sure, it started off fine, even though at no time did we ever go a full week with a post per day, but it just tapered off, much like a relationship that we thought had potential after the first date but faded as none of us really saw it going anywhere.
The point, if there is one, is that blogging, like anything else, requires some measure of enthusiasm in order to advance. Sure, we all still love our kids, and Lord knows they still provide us with stories, but blogging about those stories doesn't hold our interest the way we thought it would.
This blog, on the other hand, is something I'm passionate about. It's cathartic for me to be able to belch out my thoughts on writing, and I have something besides "real life" to go on about. Maybe that's the key. I know there are lots of parent blogs out there, but none appealed to me because it wasn't an escape - this blog is.
I'm glad I can escape. Now I've got to figure out where to escape to...
I say this because this wasn't my only blog for a while. I'm a parent, and all of us parents have bizarre stories about the things our children have done. One night, my daughter dropped a heart shaped locket in the toilet and was crying for me to retrieve it. As soon as I looked in the bowl, of course, it turns out she had just ripped off a big old shit. It took some skill and a lot of bleach to both get it back and return it to a state where we'd let her wear it again.
While relaying this story to a friend of mine, we thought it'd be neat to put this, along with a whole bunch of other stories about our kids, online for the world to laugh at with us. It was part revelatory and part therapy. I found six other parents I know, and we agreed to each do a post a week, with each of us assigned to a different day. Each post didn't have to be long, maybe just a quote, but something to get the ball rolling. After all, our stories were so funny that the web traffic would roll right in...right?
Yeah - it lasted about five weeks.
The necessary enthusiasm just wasn't there. Life intruded, as it has a habit to do, and we all missed deadlines. Sure, it started off fine, even though at no time did we ever go a full week with a post per day, but it just tapered off, much like a relationship that we thought had potential after the first date but faded as none of us really saw it going anywhere.
The point, if there is one, is that blogging, like anything else, requires some measure of enthusiasm in order to advance. Sure, we all still love our kids, and Lord knows they still provide us with stories, but blogging about those stories doesn't hold our interest the way we thought it would.
This blog, on the other hand, is something I'm passionate about. It's cathartic for me to be able to belch out my thoughts on writing, and I have something besides "real life" to go on about. Maybe that's the key. I know there are lots of parent blogs out there, but none appealed to me because it wasn't an escape - this blog is.
I'm glad I can escape. Now I've got to figure out where to escape to...
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